Director/Story/Photography – Zack Snyder, Screenplay – Shay Hatten, Kurt Johnstad & Zack Snyder, Producers – Wesley Coller, Eric Newman, Deborah Snyder & Zack Snyder, Music – Tom Holkenborg, Visual Effects Supervisors – Marcus Taormina, Visual Effects – Framestore (Supervisors – Bryan Litson & Robert Winter), Luma Pictures, Mammal Studios (Supervisor – Gregory D. Liegey), Rodeo FX Inc (Supervisors – Mai-Ling Dydo & Sebstien Francoeur), Scanline VFX (Supervisor – Justin Mitchell) & Weta FX Limited (Supervisors – Robin Hollander & Ken McGaugh),, Special Effects Supervisor – Michael Gaspar, Makeup Effects – Fractured FX (Designer – Justin Raleigh), Production Design – Stefan Dechant & Stephen Swain. Production Company – Grand Electric/Stone Quarry.
Cast
Sofia Boutella (Kora), Ed Skrein (Admiral Atticus Noble), Micheil Huisman (Gunnar), Djimon Hounsou (General Titus), Doona Bae (Nemesis), Staz Nair (Tarak), Ray Fisher (Darrian Bloodaxe), Anthony Hopkins (Voice of Jimmy), Ingvar Sigurdsson (Hagen), Sky Yang (Aris), Charlotte Maggi (Sam), Fra Fee (Balisarius), Cleopatra Coleman (Devra), Elise Duffy (Milius), Alfonso Herrera (Cassius), Stuart Martin (Den), Cary Elwes (The King), Stella Grace Fitzgerald (Princess Issa)
Plot
With Admiral Atticus Noble dead, the rebels return to Veldt, believing the threat to be over. However, Atticus is brought back to life in a resurrection chamber. Upon emerging, he immediately heads back to Veldt, announcing that they will come to collect the crop in five days’ time. General Titus organises the farmers to quickly harvest the crop and prepare the defences they have against the force of The Imperium.
Rebel Moon – A Child of Fire: Part One (2023) was the first part of a Space Opera from Zack Snyder. Snyder made clear homage to the Star Wars film, while substantially drawing his plot from The Seven Samurai (1954) or The Magnificent Seven (1960) in the story of a ragtag group of intergalactic fighters brought together to defend a small planet against a threat from outside. Snyder always intended Rebel Moon to be a two-part film and The Scargiver is that second part, released four months after A Child of Fire.
A Child of Fire wasn’t a great film but it was passably entertaining. The Scargiver continues the plot threads left dangling at the end of Part One and brings the story to a conclusion. I won’t say to an end as there is one significant plot thread that is left open right at the end for the clear intent of making more sequels (something that has been announced by Snyder).
Part One built up a suitable head of steam as an action film, culminating on Sofia Boutella killing Ed Skrein’s bad guy at the climax. By contrast, The Scargiver resurrects Skrein in the opening scene and then is nearly an hour of inaction before we get back to the conflict. After Part One built up reasonable momentum, this feels like a sudden putting on of the brakes and a coast along in the slow lane. Instead of going back into action, Snyder takes us through long scenes where the mercenaries are presented with special blankets by the villagers, longhouse celebrations that even include Djimon Hounsou singing, the reaping of the crop and the preparation of the defences, and then a long eve of the war scene where each of the mercenaries go around the table and confess their past transgressions, which we see play out in flashback. If Rebel Moon were edited together as a single film, it would be two hours of building action (Part One) and then an hour long interlude before things pick up again in time for the climax.
Kora (Sofia Boutella) in action
Certainly, Zack Snyder does make up for this once the battle scenes begin. Unfortunately, we then get a single battlefield sequence that goes on for about the next hour. This hops around different locales but is essentially no more than one long shoot-‘em-up. Now some of this is undeniably well staged – I particularly liked Sofia Boutella’s climactic fight with Ed Skrein aboard the collapsing dreadnought fought with lightsabres glowing swords. And these scenes do have Ed Skrein back and being magnificently evil. On the other hand, your attention wanders through all of this as it keeps going on and on. I am quite sure there could have been a version of Rebel Moon that could have been created in the editing room that would trim the entire saga down to a manageable and quite welcome two hours. There is no reason it couldn’t have been one film instead of one okay one and a bloated extended climax.
Often Snyder’s direction and breaking action up into slow-motion bursts looks something ludicrous. The scenes with the villagers gathering the crop is unintentionally funny – you’ve never seen so many men with shirts off to reveal incredibly buffed physiques outside of a gay nightclub, while the scenes employing scythes and then beating the sheaves is blown up into monumental action moves.
The other thing that does get me about these Rebel Moon films is that the populace of an entire planet seems to be reduced to no more than a single village whose populace would people would not number more than 150. Are there not any other villages, towns or cities on the planet? Why the obsession with this one particular village? It feels as though the script’s adherence to The Seven Samurai, in the 16th Century Sengoku period, is being too faithful and not imagining the story expanded in intergalactic terms.
